OK, I had a funny thing happen when I was play-testing a scenario today. I had heavy smoke on a Soviet Objective with multiple Soviet armour units engaged. The closest BLUE unit (GB Infantry Squad routed) was three hexes away. A Soviet T64 (immobilized/ horizontal arrow facing right in attached picture) fired on an advancing T-80 (vertical arrow facing up in picture) and killed it with a 125mm round (saw the kill/round report)???

The computer controlled the Soviet, and player the British.

In all my years of playing this game (since it came out), I've never seen that before. Is Blue on Blue/ Red on Red fratricide possible in the game code?

The photo attached is with the smoke cleared, and, of course, after action.

But the game does not allow friends to target each other in direct fire.

Thanks, that might have been it. I was watching the screen but frankly, wanting to get through the turn to see if my marching orders were being executed, and I was put back a little when I saw the report.

Very rare happened to me once in a town map, more common due to the size of the blast though I have learnt not to put myself in that position is engineers with Demo Charges destroying there APC if they are in same or adjacent hex.

HE is an area effect, and so it decides what was struck - a rear hit if shooting at its front could therefore be rationalised as a near miss that hit the ground just behind the target and splattered fragments backward and do an "up the kilt" hit from the frontal arc.

Just like AP gets confused if you are in the same hex and can give any facing hit. That goes back to the original SP1 V1 which did not allow you to enter the same hex as an enemy. That is also probably why there is the infantry assault allowed at 1 hex range, since you could not actually enter the tank's hex in SP1v1. It was either a later SP1 version, or SP2 where entering the same hex as an enemy was allowed. Also - SP1v1 may not have allowed same-hex movement of friends, either - but that's so long ago in the past I cannot really recall. Again, it was only a later version, or SP2 that allowed stacking, deducting MP for passing through.